


Angelic Senses

by finereluctance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, episode 9x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 18:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1480192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finereluctance/pseuds/finereluctance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>spoilers for 9x18 and warning for heavy angst; Castiel knew something was wrong the moment he spoke to Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angelic Senses

***

Cas heard it first in Dean’s voice. A heaviness, a weight that bore down on him more than anything else ever had. It was more than the mark Hell had left on him, more than the guilt and self-loathing he had been burdened with since childhood, but he couldn’t determine what exactly was off. Not in just a few words over the phone.

Still, Dean’s gruff tones brought a smile to his face. They hadn’t seen one another in months and there was a piece of Cas that ached to be near him. It was buried deep in the same part of him that burned any time he used the grace he had stolen, the closest thing an angel would ever have to a soul that could tell him when things were **wrong**.

He knew, of course. He knew the moment he stole grace from another angel that it would burn, that in the end it would destroy his vessel and without grace of his own he would die. He never expected to survive. He never planned to return to Heaven. He only knew it was on him to open the gates somehow.

***

Cas saw it the moment he was free of the car and given over to the Winchesters. Dean’s soul, which had always glowed brighter than any star in the sky, was dim – its light diminished, veiled. He didn’t understand. Even in Hell Dean’s soul had been a beacon that called to him from across the wastelands. If Hell couldn’t make the light fade there was nothing Castiel could imagine that would affect it in such a way.

The light pulsed just enough to be noticed when he approached. It shone just a little brighter as it reached for him, the way it always had since their first meeting in Hell. Cas had never really explained to Dean what their profound bond really meant, because he hadn’t needed to. He might not be able to see it as obviously as Cas did, but Dean already knew. Dean’s soul needed Cas’ grace as much as Cas’ grace needed Dean’s soul. The current bastardized and broken versions of grace and soul would never be so compatible. They would reach for one another, but it was going to hurt. It was inevitable – they would both suffer.

But why? It made no sense that the old cracks in Dean’s soul, the ones Cas had infused with his own grace, had gone dark. Where his soul still pulsed with a soft glow, it was overlaid with cracks of darkness. The closer Cas drew he realized it wasn’t just cracks, but deep fissures had developed. Not enough to break his soul, not yet, but they would continue to grow if the darkness was allowed to fester within them.

Cas would burn, but Dean would break.

***

Cas felt it the instant he touched Dean’s arm. The Mark of Cain. It burned beneath his fingers, the darkness wicked up his fingers into his hand and wrist, and every celestial instinct told him to release him immediately. Stubbornly he needed confirmation with his own eyes, so he held on. Dean’s sleeve was jerked up and there it was, burned into Dean’s arm as it used to be upon Cain’s.

He didn’t know who broke contact first – did Dean pull away from his touch? Did he release Dean’s arm before the darkness spread further up his arm? The moment they lost contact Cas could breathe again, but the ache in his soul grew. The Righteous Man was never meant to carry that burden and deep within Cas his forgotten guardian instincts flared. 

Over the years he had known the Winchesters Cas’ position had changed with them. In the beginning it was his mission to look after the Righteous Man, but while he had always tried to protect Dean it had become an act of love rather than the obligation of angelic instinct and orders.

Contact with the Mark of Cain woke that instinct within him; as if he had finally woken from a long slumber and discovered just how much the world had changed, but his role was still the same. To rescue the Righteous Man from the Abyss. He would not fail.

***

Cas soothed it away, when he was finally able. He wanted to be there with Dean, to be at his side to watch over him, to stop the darkness before it consumed him, but he had other responsibilities. He had others to protect and to lead against Metatron, he couldn’t abandon them, and so he continued his work and he waited. The prayer was desperate when it finally came, panicked and worried. Sam cried out for him in silent prayer because they needed him. Dean needed him.

He hurried to them and wished every moment that he still had his wings. He prayed to his Father, he begged to be there sooner, to be closer, and finally he was there though he never did know if it was his own will or intervention from God that sped his journey along. The stolen grace was nearly gone, burned away bit by bit each day it resided within him, and his body had suffered the same ill effects. He looked gaunt and haggard, as if he hadn’t slept or eaten properly in months, but his appearance was the last thought in his mind when he laid his eyes upon his charge. His best friend. 

The darkness had nearly consumed his once-shining soul. Anger and wrath, hatred and bitterness, that is what rolled off him in waves. Castiel fought down the urge to wretch the closer he got and Dean lashed out at him with fists and words. Cruel, painful words of abandonment, of betrayal. Things Castiel had hoped Dean had forgiven him for were thrown at him as weapons, but the angel moved steadily closer even as the blows began to land upon the body he could no longer heal.

He reached out his hand, two fingers extended, and touched Dean’s forehead with what little grace he had until Dean collapsed into his arms, unconscious. Sam gasped somewhere behind them, but no one heard because the barely-angel was focused completely on the man in his arms. Gently he settled them both upon the ground and tears fell from his eyes when he looked upon what had become the soul he loved. It was his fault he hadn’t been there. Castiel had regrets, a great many of them after the mistakes he had made, but his greatest regret was there in his hands. Carefully, gently, he called the last of the stolen grace from his body and allowed it to seep into Dean’s soul where it wrapped around the darkness and flooded the deep fissures.

He did not know if it would matter. It might not change anything at all, but he had to try. It was all he could do. He bowed his head, his hands wrapped around the broken soul, and he cried. Castiel had nothing more to give: he’d lost his grace, he’d destroyed his body with stolen grace, his faith was all but gone, but he would hold Dean’s brokenness together as long as he could. As long as his body held out, he would be there.

It felt as if they had been there for hours on the cold concrete. Cas’ legs had long-since fallen numb beneath the weight of Dean’s body, but miraculously his body was still warm, the soul a gentle light beneath a veil of darkness. Castiel prayed, pleaded, and cried out to his Father to save this one man. To take his life in place of Dean’s, though he knew they would both likely die there before the dawn. His shoulders trembled and his teeth chattered, but still he held on. Still he prayed.

The dawn had only just arrived when the cold was gradually leeched from his body and replaced with comfortable warmth that spread from his toes until it infused every inch of his being. He wondered if it was finally the moment before Death would take him, but Death never came. No reaper appeared. Only the light of the morning and a warmth that continued to grow as the sunlight reached their frozen bodies and washed over them with the softness of Grace and Heaven. 

Cas felt it first within himself, as if the sun renewed his strength, as if the light healed the damage he had done to his body. Focused again on Dean’s soul he was shocked to see that the light spread from his own hands to infuse the darkness with grace. Slowly, as methodically as he had pieced together Dean’s soul and body after the time it had spent in Hell, he filled the fissures and cracks with the soft blue of his own grace. Where it had come from, he didn’t know, but it was there and it was his once again.

He held Dean’s soul until every crack was gone, until the soul shone with the unblemished light of the sun, and only then did he gently place it back where it belonged. A touch to Dean’s arm revealed that the Mark of Cain had been overlaid with a handprint. **His** handprint. A claim that superseded the previous claim the Mark of Cain had upon his soul.

The angel, renewed, was shocked. Even as his grace still returned to his vessel, as the ebony wings spread once again from his back, he pondered the mark and what it meant. There was no research to be done - it was only divine intervention that could have allowed for such an act. In the light of morning, with Dean sleeping peacefully upon his lap, Castiel had no doubts that his Father had answered his prayers.

“You have made the greatest sacrifice,” a voice whispered on the wind, “to give your life for the love of another. For that, you have been rewarded. Go, my children, and live.”


End file.
